When I was growing up, Mt. Samat was the venue for the annual celebration of Araw ng Kagitingan, formerly Bataan Day, commemorating the day Bataan fell to the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. The Mt. Samat Memorial shrine was built in the late 1960's.
I was within the area about two weeks ago and just had to make a quick trip to the site. I was with a team deploying EFT POS to a chain of LPG stores in the Bataan area, and we were within an hour's drive of the memorial. We left the store at Orini just past 4:00pm, went to Balanga to withdraw money from the ATM (it being the only place in the area where there's an BPI or Landbank ATM. And were at the highway crossroad to Morong by 5:00pm. I was with Tony, the technical guy and Mang Louie. And while on the way, we were also trying to search for a convenience store or sari-sari store where we can buy some bottled water. Mang Louie noticed a fruit stand offering buco juice. We had fresh buco juice, straight from the buco. We left the roadside stand around 5:30 or thereabouts.
Off we went to the shrine. Not getting lost as there were landmarks all the way to the intersection, With the van climbing, we noticed that there were no traffic on the road up the mountain. We only saw one group of hiders going down, a couple on a motorbike also going down and a road crew painting lanes. It was already 6:00pm when we got to the gate where a big sign said "Touring hours from 8:00am to 5:00pm." Only thing to do was to turn around and take some pictures along the way.
Obviously, that was the first time any of us had ever gone to the shrine. hehe All in all, it was fun. Didn't get to see much of the shrine, but the road trip was great.
--andoy
8 April 2008
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